Draft and Recruitment (Sports)

News about Draft and Recruitment, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Mar. 23, 2015

College basketball coaches have widely differing opinions on NBA rule that prohibits high school players from signing with professional team but allows them to quit college programs after only one year to enter draft. MORE

Feb. 20, 2015

University of Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota is being considered for draft by Tampa Bay Buccaneers, among other teams. MORE

Feb. 15, 2015

Increasing number of college-bound athletes are refusing to sign national letter of intent, document that makes decision binding according to NCAA rules; issue is part of national debate about recruiting that could give young athletes even more leverage; refusal to sign NLI is coming from experience of many young players who were personally recruited by college coaches who then took other jobs before school year even started. MORE

Oct. 23, 2014

National Basketball Association's board of governors vote down measure to overhaul the way the draft lottery is conducted; in current lottery system, worst team in league has 25 percent chance of securing top pick in draft; revised lottery would have worsened those odds, with goal of not overly rewarding teams for losing. MORE

Aug. 3, 2014

Reeves Wiedeman article explores how youth basketball in America has been taken over by companies like Nike; profiles Terrance Williams, head coach of Team Scan Cardinals, one of best youth-basketball programs in the country; describes difficulty Williams has in reconciling his idealistic goals with fact that sport has become thriving business concerned with college and professional basketball recruitment prospects. MORE

May. 12, 2014

NFL will not decide until late summer where 2015 draft will take place, but Commissioner Roger Goodell says league is considering several changes, including expanding the event to four days and moving part or all of it to another location; Radio City Music Hall has hosted nine consecutive drafts. MORE

May. 9, 2014

Personalizing jerseys for top NFL draft picks in brief moments between when the selection is announced and the player takes the stage on Draft Day is a mix of preparation, practice and sleight of hand, helped by the wonders of television. MORE

May. 8, 2014

NFL draft, the league's most popular off-the-field event, has become a three-day spectacle that commands months of intense interest; is a marketing machine that feeds the seemingly insatiable desire for information about the nation's most popular sport and the college players who learn their professional fates on live television. MORE

May. 8, 2014

International recruiting has become a theme among college golf teams; Long Island University Brooklyn women’s golf team, which will compete at the NCAA regional tournament, has a roster of players from New Zealand, Spain, Italy, England, Mexico and the United States. MORE

May. 4, 2014

Box Seats column; Mel Kiper Jr, ESPN's lead NFL draft expert, is no longer producing his annual draft report--a 150-page-or-so guide that fed NFL draft obsession since 1979; for the 2014 NFL draft, and in the future, subscribers are on their own. MORE

Apr. 26, 2014

Juliet Macur Sports Of The Times column argues that it may be time to do away with NBA's one-year rule, which effectively requires players to spend at least a year in college before entering the draft. MORE

Jan. 27, 2014

Story of Haley Berg, high-school freshman who has already accepted soccer scholarship to the University of Texas, illustrates intensifying competition for top players that has led recruiters to focus on ever-younger girls; many coaches and parents worry about the physical and psychological toll that trend, among other sports as well, may take on youngsters. MORE

Jun. 8, 2013

College coaches are using transfer rule to prevent athletes who wish to change schools from getting many, if not all, of their preferred options; universities have long sought to block student-athletes from transferring to a rival program, but the impulse to limit the student-athlete’s options has been heightened to the point that coaches are now blacklisting dozens of universities. MORE

Jun. 7, 2013

Houston Astros select Mark Appel, a starting pitcher out of Stanford, with the first pick in Major League Baseball’s first-year player draft. MORE

Jun. 6, 2013

Stanford pitcher Mark Appel's stock plummeted before 2012 MLB draft because of his salary demands, and although he pitched even better this year, he still may not be taken first over all. MORE

Jun. 6, 2013

Stanford pitcher Mark Appel, Oklahoma pitcher Jonathan Gray and San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant stand out as the top choices in 2013 MLB draft. MORE

Apr. 8, 2013

N.F.L. representatives will meet with the New York attorney general’s office to discuss the league’s investigation of questions players were asked about sexual orientation at the scouting combine in February. MORE

Feb. 22, 2013

Every player at NFL scouting combine will undergo psychological assessment designed to determine and quantify nebulous qualities that coaches have long believed make the most successful players--motivation, competitiveness, passion and mental toughness; goal is to eliminate the impact of prior knowledge, in which racial and socioeconomic factors may have influence. MORE

Feb. 19, 2013

Some major colleges fear looser NCAA recruiting rules; under pending legislation, college coaches would be able to exchange unlimited phone calls and text messages with prospects, among other rule changes. MORE

Feb. 3, 2013

Character Study column on Tom Konchalski, college basketball scout with uncanny memory for faces, names, dates and high school basketball lore. MORE

Feb. 3, 2013

San Francisco 49ers general manager Trent Baalke, with his meticulous scouting for 2011 NFL draft, helped to assemble a team that will play in Super Bowl XLVII. MORE

Apr. 4, 2012

University of Kentucky's victory in the NCAA men's basketball championship draws attention to the NBA's so-called 'one-and-done' rule, which requires that players be one year removed from graduating from high school before they are eligible for the draft; critics say that the rule gives college basketball players little incentive to excel academically as they are intent on going professional, as Kentucky's five starters, who are all underclassmen, are expected to do. MORE

Nov. 10, 2011

Keith Tribble, athletic director and assistant football coach at the University of Central Florida, resigns amid an NCAA investigation into illicit recruiting practices tied to a man identified as a recruiter for a sports agent. MORE

Oct. 3, 2011

Quad blog; report that Tennessee assistant football coach Willie Mack Garza paid $1,500 for top-rated tailback Lache Seastrunk and his mother to fly to unofficial visit to the university sends reverberations throughout college sports and portrays Garza and Tennessee staff flagrantly disobeying NCAA rules on unofficial visits. MORE

Aug. 13, 2011

Analysis; NCAA's meetings on sordid state of recruiting in college sports fail to address its most corrosive problems: middlemen who sell players, coaches who broker deals with boosters and abuse in payments for unofficial visits. MORE

Four years ago, St. John’s brought in a group of recruits that seemingly had the potential to return the program to the top tier, but now those seniors are still looking for their first N.C.A.A. tournament berth.

Several prominent conferences are exploring the possibility of making athletes ineligible to play men’s basketball and football during their freshman years to discourage the so-called one-and-done phenomenon.